[Clipart] PD license

[Greg Bulmash]

To copyright a work, you must be the author, the legal agent of the 
author, or someone to whom the ownership of the piece has been legally 
granted.  You can't stumble across a work and say "looks like no one 
owns this, so I'll plant a flag and claim it in the name of England."

If you dedicate something to the Public Domain, no one else can legally 
claim ownership without making false statements to the copyright office.

Yes, they can commercially exploit the image... like making t-shirts 
with it, using it in ads, etc.  And the derivative work they create, if 
it contains substantial originality, can be copyrighted.  But they 
cannot then go and claim a copyright on your image and stop people from 
using it in other ways.  They can only go after people using their work 
or something substantially similar.

With Trademark, because there is a record of the image being made part 
of a public domain repository before anyone began using it in trade, 
their attempt to restrict its use by others would be easily knocked 
down.  It's like proving prior art in a patent challenge.

Now, someone could falsely copyright your work or falsely trademark it, 
then start making threats, and you might have to pay lawyers to get a 
court to make their stupidity stop.  But you could also have your 
neighbor sue you because they believe the color of your car is reducing 
their property value and you'd have to pay a lawyer to make that 
stupidity stop too.


- Greg



chovynz wrote:
> And then Evil Corporation Number 1 comes along, grabs my nicely finished 
> and polished clipart that has taken 6 hours to make, Trademarks and 
> copyrights it into their logo, then sues me for using their logo on my 
> website.
> 
> /"Dedicator recognizes that, once placed in the public domain, the Work 
> may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, used, modified, 
> built upon, or *otherwise exploited* by anyone for any purpose, 
> *commercial* or non-commercial, and in any way, including by methods 
> that have not yet been invented or conceived." /
> 
> Once you release something to the PD, yes it's irreversible. But it 
> means that anyone can come along and copyright it, removing that 
> particular clipart from the public domain for the next 60 odd years.
> 
> It's troublesome to me.
> 
> 
> On Sun, Apr 12, 2009 at 7:06 PM, Oleg Koptev <koptev.oleg at gmail.com 
> <mailto:koptev.oleg at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>     chovynz, afaik process of submit something as 'PD' is irreversible
>     process.
> 
>     '/Dedicator intends this dedication to be an overt act of
>     relinquishment in perpetuity of all present and future rights under
>     copyright law, whether vested or contingent, in the Work./'
>     http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/
> 
> 
>     2009/4/12 chovynz <chovynz at gmail.com <mailto:chovynz at gmail.com>>
> 
>         I've been thinking about some things, and something keeps coming
>         back to me.
>         If I upload something with PD license, there is actually nothing
>         stopping people or a business from taking that clipart,
>         copyrighting it then suing me for using my own clipart on my own
>         website/book/CD cover/tshirt/artwork/publicly available and
>         viewed material.
> 
>         Now obviously this has some problems that concern me greatly.
>         First, it's unfair. Second, ANYTHING in the PD can be
>         copyrighted. Third: While I respect a number of people, I don't
>         trust humanity as a whole. There will always be selfish greedy
>         people. While I believe in helping/supporting people, I'm also
>         aware that there are people who don't give two cents for the
>         life of another person. These people have no respect for
>         fairness, or what's right, and there is nothing stopping them
>         from taking a clipart, then copyrighting or trademarking, which
>         then means that the original PD clipart is lost to the public. I
>         think there is a majority of people that would respect the PD
>         license and would continue derivitaves in the same way. But, all
>         it takes is one person or corporation to do copyright something,
>         and that clipart is lost to the public for 50-100 years.
> 
>         There has been a large effort on the part of CC and some other
>         groups to limit this unfairness, however everything on OCAL is
>         in the PD. This concerns me a bit.
> 
>         The goal of OCAL is to provide better and better clipart over
>         time. What is going to happen when someone see's clipart they
>         like and copyrights it, then askes OCAL to remove it from their
>         Library? What is stopping one person or corporation from doing
>         so, to ALL the clipart in the library?
> 
>         I do not currently see a good solution to this problem, but I
>         think it is a future issue that needs thinking about and addressing.
> 
>         Thoughts?
> 
> 
>         -- 
>         Cheers
>         Chovynz
> 
>         _______________________________________________
>         clipart mailing list
>         clipart at lists.freedesktop.org <mailto:clipart at lists.freedesktop.org>
>         http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/clipart
> 
> 
> 
> 
>     -- 
>     C уважением, Коптев Олег
>     With respect, Koptev Oleg
> 
>     Jabber ID - koptevoleg at jabber.ru <mailto:koptevoleg at jabber.ru>
>     WWW — http://ktulhuntu.blogspot.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Cheers
> Chovynz
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> _______________________________________________
> clipart mailing list
> clipart at lists.freedesktop.org
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/clipart